The Wonder Woman effect

The British fashion brand behind the superhero’s leather armour is having a major moment

The leather costume has proved to be a huge hit

Gal Gadot, DC Comics and the whole Justice League gang are not the only big winners from Wonder Woman, the film franchise that has already taken in more than $780m (£603m) globally; it just seems to keep on giving (and is already gearing up for a sequel).

The latest beneficiary of the film’s halo effect is Whitaker Malem – the London leather designer brand behind the superheroine’s metallic leather armour, as well as the armour for her fellow Amazons. They are this season’s breakout British brand.

“Wonder Woman is our calling card at the moment,” said Keir Malem, 52, sitting with his partner, Paddy Whitaker, also 52, in the loft-like ground floor of their two-story home and atelier in Dalston, East London.

Dotted around the walls are mementos from their travels, mixed in with seminal artworks from the 20th-century Italian maestro Lucio Fontana and a 1970s 3-D spotted torso by the British pop artist Allen Jones. The two men, who uncannily look and dress alike, had just returned from a five-month stint making more leather armour on location in Australia for Wonder Woman’s sister film, Aquaman, scheduled for release in December 2018.

Just upstairs from where they were sitting was the atelier where the Wonder Woman armour, commissioned by Lindy Hemming – the film’s costume designer – was born.

The two work at side-by-side desks, and pictures adorn the main wall, including a close-up of the Wonder Woman costume made before it was metallicised. Torsos fitted with leather corsets litter the room, while hidden at the back is a vintage 1950s-singer sewing machine, bought at Chapel Market in north London for £60 in 1988. On it, Malem said, “everything is done, even though it wasn’t made for sewing leather”.

Items from Whitaker Malem, the fashion brand in London behind the metallic leather armour worn in 'Wonder Woman'

Called “beyond cool” by New York magazine, Wonder Woman’s armour has become a breakout star in its own right. “We were allowed to go close to the body and do sexy armour, which is unusual, as a lot of armour is massive,” Malem said.

Rihanna’s stylist, Mel Ottenberg, asked to borrow a moss-green shearling corset for the kick-off of the star’s jewellrey collaboration with Chopard at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

The veteran costume designer Sandy Powell – known for films like Shakespeare in Love and the coming Mary Poppins Returns – asked Whitaker Malem to design armour for her latest film, The Favourite. (They couldn’t do it because of Aquaman. “We were gutted,” Malem said.)

And the arty French Double magazine featured Joan Severance, the model and actress, wearing one of their moulded black bustier collaborations with Allen Jones in its current spring/summer 2017 issue. “We’d never been in that magazine before,” Malem said. Now “we’re exposed to a whole new audience”.

Even Donatella Versace riffed on the Wonder Woman look in her recent couture collection, with a corseted catsuit glittering with nearly 8,000 sequins and a gold leather mini dress.

Though best known today for their film work, which has included Luke Evans’ red leather jacket in this year’s Beauty and the Beast, as well as the 2008 The Dark Knight bat suit, Whitaker Malem began life as a fashion house in 1988, focusing on leather. The designers had met by chance at a house party in London two years earlier: Whitaker was studying fashion design at Central Saint Martins and Malem was acting at the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, in northwest London, after dropping out of a hairdressing course at the London College of Fashion.

After two runway collections and after dressing such names as Paula Abdul and Cher in leather, however, the two were still struggling to make ends meet, and moved into collaborating with other fashion designers. They made a gold leather dress for Alexander McQueen’s spring/summer 1997 Givenchy collection, and a leather eagle bustier for Tommy Hilfiger’s spring/summer 2000 Red Label.

“Our biggest fashion mistake was that Isabella Blow asked our PR to be given one of our dresses and we wouldn’t let her have it,” said Whitaker, referring to the late famed British stylist and pointing to a photograph of the gold chain mail dress with a gold moulded ivy leaf leather bustier in one of their scrapbooks. “Maybe, had we given it to her, things might have been different.”

Still, it was a learning experience that helped them embrace their newfound Wonder Woman fame.

Malem and Whitaker are now focusing on personal fine-art work, funded by their film fees, which largely involves male and female bodies fashioned in leather and spliced together to create a wall sculpture.

“We hope that the people who think this Wonder Woman stuff is cool are going to want to have it on their walls when we sell it,” said Whitaker, pointing out the superhero overtones of an idealised hermaphroditic body.

The pieces were first shown at a fine leather work exhibition curated by a British leather-goods veteran, Bill Amberg, during May’s London Craft Week just as Wonder Woman’s publicity machine was cranking up.

This autumn, a solo show called Leather Unbound, part retrospective, part new work (part, yes, Wonder Woman) will open at the Gallery Liverpool. There are plans to take it to Moscow and Los Angeles later.

“We’re going to show the Wonder Woman barbie dolls because they are so accurate, but not in their boxes,” Whitaker said. Instead, he said, the plan is to show them under acrylic “in a cool, slightly ironic way to celebrate the pop art side of things”.

Photographs of the leather working process will also be on display, including illustrations of how the costume was gilded with gold, silver, copper and aluminium leaf.

As to whether he was worried Wonder Woman’s appeal might be over by the late autumn, Whitaker shook his head. “The Wonder Woman Blu-ray and DVD comes out for Christmas,” he said.

© New York Times